Friday, November 11, 2011

http://www.ted.com Artist and TED Fellow Aparna Rao re-imagines the familiar in surprising, often humorous ways. With her collaborator Soren Pors, Rao creates high-tech art installations -- a typewriter that sends emails, a camera that tracks you through the room only to make you invisible on screen -- that put a playful spin on ordinary objects and interactions.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

Friday, October 28, 2011

http://www.ted.com With scissors and paper, artist Béatrice Coron creates intricate worlds, cities and countries, heavens and hells. Striding onstage in a glorious cape cut from Tyvek, she describes her creative process and the way her stories develop from snips and slices.

Friday, October 21, 2011

America has a long tradition of handmade arts and crafts. In the manufacturing age, however, much of this work was overshadowed by the homogenizing force of retail culture. But the passion for handmade arts didn't disappear, and persisted through the years in local craft fairs. Now in the age of the internet, these local craft cultures and artists have found a unifying online community, Etsy, that provides a platform for communication and sales to appreciative fans and customers, as well as a medium to connect with each other and share ideas across the globe.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

If you want to try this for yourself, I've created two PDF templates: this one has base and lid patterns to fit metal taken from a 330ml can - and this one is for use with a tall 440ml can. - they ideally need to be printed on A4 paper.
See page 3 for more details on how to use these templates - because this one is a bit more complex, they're laid out in two colours - the red lines need embossing from the front face of the metal.

More Metalwork

This project makes use of very thin sheet metal that is likely to have sharp, jagged edges and is prone to springing back. Great care should be taken to avoid injury.
This project probably isn't suitable for children - and certainly not without supervision.

More tinwork fun with drink cans. This time for a star-shaped box with a convex profile - the design is still a bit half-baked, but I'm putting it online in case anyone wants to experiment with it.

This is my prototype, which turned out quite well - it's interesting how the geometry of the internal corners on the star shape make the points pull back, lending a convex profile to the lid.
It's a bit more fiddly to draw out and assemble than any of the previous designs, partly because of the folding during assembly and partly just because it has such a lot of corners. It's not impossible though - the thin aluminium is quite flexible and forgiving.

Up to now, I've been scrubbing off the paint from the metal before making the boxes, or at least constructing them so that it's hidden on the inside.
But some cans have designs that are quite attractive - so let's see if we can exploit it in the finished design.

So I marked out the net of the box - same techniques as for the hexagonal one - hold the template over the sheet of metal and just press through the nodes, then take away the paper and join up the dots.
I used a 330ml can here and I managed to get both the base and lid onto the metal from a single can.

I kept the embossed design quite simple.
I used a 330ml can here and I managed to get both the base and lid onto the metal from a single can.
Folding it up was pretty much the same as for the simpler designs - the sides have to be kept pretty much straight until (and so that) the edge tabs can be folded over, then they can be pushed inwards to form the internal corners of the star afterward.

Here are the assembled boxes - the ink from the embossing/outlining process doesn't really suit the painted side of the metal, so I washed it off with soapy water.
The two halves of the box need a little tweaking and bending to adjust them to fit each other properly,

The painted design on the box obscured the embossing, so I rubbed the paint off the high spots with some abrasive paper - bringing out the embossed lines quite nicely.
So here's the fiished box - I think a collection of these, made from different coloured cans, and strung on thin wire or gold thread, would not look out of place as Christmas tree ornaments - sure, it's fairly obvious that they're recycled, but that sort of thing seems to be quite fashionable at the moment.

Here's a video detailing the techniques and methods. This video documents the construction of a square box, but the procedure is the same for other shapes. A downloadable template for the star boxes is available if you want to try this for yourself - see the side column for details.

Under Armor – Lingerie made from recycled cans

Ingrid Goldbloom Blochâ€™s fascination with alterna-art materials began as a little girl when sheâ€™d follow her dad around hardware stores inspecting bins of nuts and bolts…Over the years, the Needham self-taught artist and mother of two has found ways to combine hardware with traditional art materials such as beads and yarn for one-of-a-kind teapots, urns, and lingerie.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Some folks like to eat Necco wafers, but Baltimore-based artist Denise Tassin enjoys drawing on them. In a new solo show at San Francisco's Zinc Details gallery, Tassin utilizes an assortment of pens — including fine-tipped Sharpies — to create miniature drawings on Necco wafers. Her drawings have currently taken a scientific route and include carefully detailed inkings similar to those found in biology books. Who would have thought that candy and fetal pig respiratory systems go hand in hand? If that's too odd for your tastes, she also has a series of Christmas related items featuring dolls and Santas, as well as a series of individually re-sealed wafers featuring random sketches.
For those of you who haven't had the joy in experiencing their chalky sweetness, Necco wafers are thin sugar wafers made by the New England Confectionary Company — hence the name Necco. They come in eight flavors and colors and make for an interesting art medium. In fact Tassin likes them so much, she has even been known to carry a pen and pack of Necco wafers with her wherever she goes. "t's like having a little studio in your pocket."
If you're in the San Francisco area, you'll be able to see her wafers up close and personal at Zinc Details from September 9 to October 31.
However, if you can't make it to the show, be sure to check out more of her artwork after the jump, just read more

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

I find it interesting that, so long after Judy Chicago and Kate Millet were festooning the Women's Building, that I helped to remodel, with great pieces of feminist art, some anonymous "guest blogger," probably a privileged, white male (and if not, someone who has learned "success" means thinking like one) has decided so subtly (but they're always subtle, aren't they?) to insinuate the artist is not legitimate. Is the art good? I don't think so. But then, for the most part, I can't stand Picasso, either, and he did a number of cartoon-like profiles. Is the artist formally educated in art history? Probably not, else she might not have described herself as "French." Is there a lot more going on here than we know from the article? Absolutely! At least she is not anonymous, as so many of my sisters, both trained in the arts and native, have become. I'm glad I got to know her.